Dungeon Defense is a tower defense game. If you are new to the genre, you have to protect something against an ongoing onslaught of enemies. In this game, that something is an Eternia Crystal, which is relevant to plot. Instead of rushing into the fray, you build towers to blockade and attack your enemies while you upgrade and repair your towers. In short, attacking enemies is a support role. You can play as the four main heroes, and if you're on the PC, then even more classes are available for you to buy via DLC. Additional material such as maps and costumes can also be bought as DLC. You may play as a single player, but teamwork is a main factor of Dungeon Defenders which is why a multiplayer mode exists.

This guide will have statistics, general tower defense strategies, and a walkthrough. You may choose to read any one section or all of them, depending on how much assistance you require. All maps presented have been tested and made sure to work well. If you have any feedback, please visit the Contacts & Credits and please send me your comments or concerns. This guide is accurate as of Version 7.39c of Dungeon Defenders.

You may have noticed that by left-clicking, you attack. Right-clicking can either be another attack (Apprentice/Adept, Monk/Initiate, Series EV, Barbarian), reload (Huntress/Ranger, Series EV), or block (Squire). Summoners left-click and right-click are quite different and you should visit the Summoner section for more details. To jump, simply press space.

Now that's over with, how do you build towers? Press middle-click for a whole bunch of actions, including access to hero abilities as well as summoning defenses. From there, navigation is pretty easy, keeping in mind that middle-click or right-click will perform something similar to "go back" in menus.

In combat, you might want to know about Shift, which shows the minimap. To pick up an item and put it in your box, use E while hovering over it. To pick it up and wear it immediately, use F. Pressing I will view your information, and Tab will allow you to chat with your teammates.

The Xbox has limited buttons which means limited hotkeys. Instead of having 10 numberkeys as ability hotkeys, you only have 4, bound to the DPads. Which means that by default, you have to open the action bumper to build towers. You have to go to your inventory to drop mana for others to use, and you cannot use G to activate the crystal from anywhere. As of now, I

In this section we'll look at some things that I wish I knew when I first started playing the game. Some of these tips are merely small conveniences, but some can really save you headaches in the long run. Even if you are an an experienced player who only glances over this guide, you might still learn a few things here. If you have more tips and tricks that I haven't listed, please share them with me and so I can add for everyone to see!

Make your character in Ranked Multiplayer! (Play Online -> Ranked) This is very important and hence it's the very first tip. If you are planning to only play solo and locally, then play Ranked anyways. Who knows, maybe if you realy like the game you might seek multiplayer, and you cannot export local characters into multiplayer. You can still play solo in Ranked by choosing Private Match.

At the end of the round, loot on the ground with autosell for mana and autosplit to everyone in the map. Thus, don't go around and loot everything thinking it will be a waste to leave them. Just pick up items you don't need and leave the rest to be split among teammates.

Upgrade your weapons so they can do more damage! Go to your weapon's info page (accessible through Hero Info or Item Box, depending if you have it equipped). Then check the "Pro Mode" box and you can enhance any stat glowing green for the price of mana! Check the mana cost under "Next Level" to see when you want to stop upgrading. You can do this to armors too, but it's not much needed until level 74.

Armor sets give you bonuses across all stats. The five "types" of armor are: leather, mail, chain, plate, pristine. For example, having all four leather-type armor will make them glow blue and all positive stats in each armor will be boosted.

Weapons and armor that are possibly better than your current gear have green arrows pointing inwards and appear with a green box around them. You can also press Shift (minimap) to see where they are located on the map, marked by greed dots.

Equipment drops marked green are not necessarily better. The factor that most affect whether the game thinks a certain gear is is good or not is the number of upgrades. You may not have enough mana to upgrade gear more than 200 times, so instead look at the stats they give. For players not yet level 74, compare damage for weapons and Generic Resistance for armor. They are probably more important than other stats for now.

Press Esc -> Options. Here, you should turn off "Auto Adjust Camera" and "Step Towards Melee Target". The former may already be turned off by default, and it's very annoying to accidentally have it on and you lose your camera angle every wave. The latter may seem useful until you hit an area full of lava and pits. You may also want to turn off "Camera Shake" to keep your character steady when dancing around those aforementioned lava and pits.

At level 70, you will find yourself gaining levels slowly. Go to "Services" tab in the Tavern Shop and buy XP Bonus for 70k mana, which should help you greatly. It's not permanent and you can only buy it once per level. The cost is probably affordable at level 70, where it's not so useful to buy it at level 10.

You can also Respec your hero for 100k mana in the "Services" tab and rename your hero for 50k mana. While this may seem like a lot of mana for a new player, later on you'll be getting 1 million mana per wave on Insane difficulty (without Survival mode).

Want one of those cool pets yet they're too expensive at the Tavern Shop? Grab a friend and do a Campaign map in Survival mode until wave 15. Any group of four below level 74 can probably do The Deeper Well on Easy difficulty Survival mode, and will get a level 50 dragon pet for free if they reach wave 15 (complete wave 14).

Even if you're not a "tower build" you can still use mana to repairing and upgrading your allies' towers. Don't be selfish and use all the mana you collected to activate flashy skills. Teamwork is most often the most important strategy in tower defense!

Press "G" when away from the crystal to ready yourself. This is extremely helpful when you want to be ready at a specific location.

Use -/= keys to decrease/increase the size of your Monk auras and Huntress trap trigger area. This is helpful when trying to avoid identical auras or overlapping traps for chain reactions.

You can look at other players' Hero Info or initiate a trade with them in the Esc menu. If they're being annoying with their microphone on, you can also mute them here.

Don't want to annoy people with background noise? Your microphone always on by default, so press Esc -> Options -> Voice and check "Push to Talk" to turn on your microphone only when you want to talk. You do this by press and holding the Alt key.

When leveling up, you can choose to spend all your points into a stat by simply Ctrl-click that stat, or Shift-click to put 5 points into a stat at a time, until you reach the hard cap of 180. This is very useful when you Respec your hero.

If you're using a staff, you can fire continuously by holding down left-click then right-click.

Barbarians can activate their Melee Combo by holding down left-click and right-click. You can deal much more damage like this!

Summoners can hover by holding down the jump key. Rangers with the jet pack costume (complete all Campaign maps in Nightmare difficulty) may also do this.

Pets can be leveled up using mana, but don't do so! Just gain experience and when you go to their "item info" you can increase their stat from time to time.

A: This may not mean what you think it means. You could be thinking that every time you turn the camera adjusts so you're always facing forward, but that's not the case. Auto Adjust Camera resets your "zoomed in" position that you adjust by scrolling the mouse wheel, which is often not very useful at all.

Q: Why does my friend have the exact same weapon that is so much better than mine?

A: There are three main reasons why this may happen. The first reason is that weapons have randomized stats up to a point, so you could simply be unlucky. Secondly, stats differ depending on what difficulty they drop on, so your Mythical Retribution that you got on Medium difficulty will also definitely be worse than the one your friend got on Nightmare difficulty. And finally, your friend may have used "Pro Mode" to boost his weapons' stats up the roof.

Q: What is the AFK Shop and how does it work?

A: In Dungeon Defenders, you cannot just list items in a shop and go play on a map. To have your shop enabled properly, you have to be at your tavern not playing a map, hence the name AFK Shop. Even though your shop will be opened when you host a custom game, by clicking on the "Show Shops" tab and then "Host AFK Shop", you will increase the number of players coming to your tavern to 12.

Q: Why does my mana get stuck at 600 million?

A: You have a soft cap of 600 million mana. After that, you won't be able to gain money through gameplay (such as autoselling at the end of a round). You could still make more money by selling items to the tavernkeep or selling items in your AFK Shop.

Q: What is the maximum mana you can have?

A: Right now it's 2 billion, although there are ways to get past them, by using mana tokens.

Q: What are mana tokens?

A: You can store your mana into tokens, up to 999,999,999 mana at a time. You can later on sell this token to the Tavern Shop and get back that exact amount of mana. This is useful if you are worried about going over 600 million mana and getting no mana from autoselling.

Q: What if I go over 2 billion mana when someone is buying at my shop?

A: If that happens, the mana you get will automatically be converted into mana tokens. Of course since you have limited inventory space, this could be problematic too, but most of the time it will cause no problems.

A: You probably tried out left clicking and right clicking, which does basic attacks and block/reload depending on your class. Your goal here is to build "towers" to prevent enemies from reaching your crystal.

Q: Should I build

Q: Which class is the best?

A: I won't be boring here with "all classes have their strengths and weaknesses," but it still depends on what you're trying to go for. If you want melee DPS it's Barbarian or Monk, while ranged DPS is Huntress. For tower blockades, Squire and Series EV are best. For tower damage, go with Apprentice or Squire. And for support (slow and confusion), Monk and Huntress are best. Summoner is the jack-of-all-trades that can add to offense or defense well, but has no basic attack.

Q: Okay, so which class should I use as a newbie?

A: Apprentice or Squire would be an easy choice. The setups I've included in this guide mostly use Apprentice or Squire, because you don't need to be flashy to use them and they do the job well.

Q: Should I go full hero stats, full tower stats, or hybrid?

A: Most of the time I would advise against hybrid. Many players have at least 1 tower character and 1 "DPS" character so that they can build with one and switch out to their DPS character before combat phase.

Q: My Squire is so incredibly slow!

A: Don't fret it. When you get to level 74 and use Mythical gear, you will probably get over 100 Hero Speed easily without ever putting a point into it.

Q: What is the most useful tower in your opinion?

A: Buff Beam of Series EV. It raises damage of attacking towers and health of blockade towers with just 4-6 DU.

Q: Why are traps so useless?

A: Huntress traps seem useless near the beginning of the game - they only have 2 charges while the Apprentice towers can fire seemingly forever. But they deal a lot more damage per hit (740 instead of Magic Missile Tower's 49), so at the beginning put them near the crystal as a last burst of defense. Later on when your traps have a respectable number of charges (around 30), then can be put in front of blockades to stall/damage enemies efficiently.

Q: I can't beat the ogre and it's only the second map!

A: If your towers are not strong enough, just attack it from behind to get "aggro" from it. Then it will turn to attack you as long as you keep attacking it and forget about the crystal. While someone keeps the ogre busy, the other 3 pummels it with ranged attacks. The Squire is very useful in distracting ogres. This also works on a lot of bosses.

A: If you put a Proximity trap around a crystal, its AoE has vertical range, but it can't be trigger by flying enemies. Therefore, you can simply Detonate the trap when wyverns come and they will be damaged. But other than that, there's really not much use for it, I agree.

Q: I invited my friend to play and he said he was banned from the match!

A: If you click "Hide Match" on the Esc menu, then no one can join, no matter what. The "banned" message is sort of erroneous and could be better phrased.

Q: I'm in a Challenge where we have a limited amount of lives. Why is it that no one died but the number of lives decreased?

A: Did someone join your game? Every time someone joins, they use a "life" no matter if they stay or leave. If you think your team is strong enough without four people, then just hide your match (press Esc -> Hide Match). People can get bored and leave when they join during combat phase, so if you want more players to join mid-game, only show your match during build phase.

In this section, I will go in-depth about the different classes - their weapons, abilities, and most importantly towers. There are 12 classes in Dungeon Defenders, with one being not yet released as of this version, which is Jester. Four of the classes - Adept, Countess, Ranger, Initiate - are opposite gender counterpairs of the "main heroes" - Apprentice, Squire, Huntress, Monk - respectively. Thus, when I refer to Squire, know that most of what I'm saying also applies to Countess. The other three available classes - Barbarian, Series EV, Summoner - are derivatives of one or more of the original four classes.

General Terminology

LMB: left mouse button

RMB: right mouse button

DU: Defense Units - each map has limits the number of towers that can be built

Hero Build: A character with stat allocations primarily into hero health and hero damage, also hero abilites (often called DPS Build).

Tower Build: A character with stat allocations primarily into tower health and tower damage, also tower range and tower attack rate.

Statistics Explanation

DPS: damage per second - a way to measure average damage

Damage Scaling: how damage is increased when points are put into tower damage, relative to the base case which is Magic Missile Tower

HP Scaling: how HP is increased when points are put into tower health, relative to the base case which is Magic Missile Tower

It is important to note that tower HP is scaled normally across most towers (1.00) so HP Scaling not often displayed. That is, putting 100 into the tower health stat will have the same multiplier across most towers. Attack range and attack speed also have scaling, but for the simplicity of this guide, they are considered normal and linear unless otherwise noted.

The Apprentice is considered an easy class to play by the game, and I would have to agree. He has one blockade tower and four attacking towers, while he stays behind them giving attack support with his ranged staff. His special attack deals damage and knocks enemy back, giving his towers or crystal a little reprieve. Just because the Apprentice is easy to play, that doesn't mean he's the weakest class. In fact there really is no "weakest" class in Dungeon Defenders, and he fills an important role in many parties. Most of the examples I give will include heavy usage of Apprentice towers.

Weapon: Staff

Click LMB: shoots energy projectiles

Hold LMB: Charge Attack - charges to release stronger projectiles

Click RMB: Knockback Attack - smash the ground, knocks back enemies

Hold LMB + RMB: shoots energy projectiles repeatedly

The staff is a relatively weak weapon compared to others, but it is ranged, can shoot extra projectiles later on, and is quite fast most of the time. Since most players who use an Apprentice put their stat points into tower health and tower damage, they will be fragile, which makes the staff a perfect long-ranged weapon suitable for the Apprentice.

This is an amazing and extremely wasteful ability. You never want to toggle Overcharge on all the time, but when you do want to, then it's very useful. For example, you could be surrounded and it doesn't look like you can escape. Quickly pressing 2 then 1 will activate Overcharge and Heal yourself quickly - even if you're surrounded! A more conventional use would be to repair/upgrade an almost dead tower with less risk of being flinched by an attack because you essentially finish in less than a second.

Ability: Instant Upgrade (Adept)

As a counterpart to the Apprentice's Overcharge ability, I somewhat dislike this ability. Because you have it active all the time, you may not want the surcharge cost of upgrading all the time. Also note that at level 5 (3 stars), attempting to upgrade that tower with an Adept will turn into instant repair, costing 1400 mana. This is good, because you can choose between normal repair for normal cost and instant repair when you need it.

Ability: Mana Bomb (Apprentice)

Hero Level 20

Type: trigger (default - press 3)

Effect: deal good damage to a group of enemies within a radius

Cost: 200 mana

This is a very nice skill that costs a truck load of mana. Like Overcharge, you shouldn't use it often, but it will be useful when you see a lot of enemies ganging up on you or an severely damaged tower. It has a 45s cooldown.

Ability: Purity Bomb (Adept)

Hero Level 20

Type: trigger (default - press 3)

Effect: deal low damage to a group of enemies within a large radius, with extra damage versus undead enemies

Cost: 200 mana

There seems to be some confusion about Purity Bomb. It does hurt normal enemies for a larger radius but way less damage. It does have a faster cooldown (30s), but that doesn't really help it being a costly spell that doesn't do a lot of damage.

Apart from the difference in abilities, both Apprentice and Adept have the same types of towers. The one last difference is that the Adept can move slightly faster and has slightly less HP than the Apprentice. I personally prefer the Adept overwhelmingly because I think Overcharge has much more uses than Instant Upgrade. Mana Bomb is also better than Purity Bomb in most situations, but I don't use Mana Bomb that much anways.

Your first tower is the basic attacking type. It has a cone-shaped range in front of it, and will attack once every 1.4s. This attacking rate, along with damage and range, will go up as you increase your stats and get better gear. As you will see, the Magic Missile Tower is useful because of its cheap DU cost and its fast attacking rate.

Here we have the cheapest blockade in the game, costing only 1 DU. It is also the weakest one, but with repairs and upgrades it should be manageable should you need a blockade with only 1 DU remaining. More importantly, it has more HP than any of your attacking towers, which means no matter how it compares to other blockades, you should place them in front of your attacking towers.

The Fireball Tower is very useful, and it is probably the most useful Apprentice tower near endgame. It does very high splash damage, so it is worth it despite its slow attacking rate. You will rarely find isolated enemies in Dungeon Defenders, so having a Fireball Tower at a chokepoint is usually a good idea. Note however that it costs twice as much as a Magic Missile Tower, so if all you use are Fireball Towers, then you can only summon half as much and probably get less coverage on the map. Therefore it's a good idea to mix up your tower types.

This tower has no directional component, meaning it will attack anything that gets within a radius of it. As the name implies, the lightning will "jump" off an enemy to the next some distance apart, starting with 6 targets at a time. Both number of targets and distance, as well as the duration of damage (the 2s) can be improved with better stats. Think of this tower as the "chain lightning" of Dungeon Defenders. Overall, it's expensive, but useful in quite a few situations.

The Deadly Striker Tower is almost an anomaly. It costs a lot to summon and has a slow cooldown, but it can do massive single burst damage and can shoot through walls. Therefore, best use for it is maybe to kill wyverns, which can fly past your defenses to your crystal and is best off killed immediately. Otherwise, it doesn't have much use, and you're better off using Magic Missile and Fireball Towers.

Next up the difficulty is the Squire, the class with medium difficulty. I think it's true, but this needs some explanation. Before you get your Harpoon Turret at level 7, you only have blockades. Even so, your cheapest ranged attacking tower costs 6 DU while the Apprentice can make a Magic Missile Tower with only 3 DU. So when it comes to flexibility, the Apprentice is ahead. Also, Squires are relatively slow compared to their "main hero" counterparts. To make up for it, he has higher HP and can dish some good damage with a long sword, even with a tower build. My examples include heavy use of Squire towers, specifically Harpoon Turrets.

Weapon: Sword, Axe

Squire's weapons range from fast swinging swords like katanas to slow axes and even chainsaws. There are a few exotic weapons they can equip as well such as boxing gloves, very fast but extremely short ranged. Because swords are melee weapons, each slash will probably damage three or more enemies since they tend to come in a group, giving squires good damage output even if the damage stat of their weapons are similar to a bow or staff. His Melee Combo attack (hold down LMB or attack repeatedly manually) is a 3-hit combo that has higher damage and range than normal attacks.

Ability: Circular Slice (Squire)

Hero Level 5

Type: trigger (default - press 2)

Effect: do a spin attack that also knocks back enemies

Cost: 60 mana

Circular slice is very useful. Not only does it hit a lot of enemies when you're surrounded, but it knocks them back in case you want to heal yourself immediately afterwards or run away. It's a perfect ability that sort of compensates for the Squire's low movement.

Ability: Joust (Countess)

We will talk about Joust first because it's the damage dealing counterpart to Circular Slice. I personally don't like Joust a lot because you don't get damage reduction while it's active and I run into lava or pits too much. I'm sure that at the hands of someone very skilled, they can toggle Joust on/off to push enemies instead of themselves into lava and pits, but it's not an essential skill to me and I prefer Circular Slice. Note that if you don't toggle Joust off, you'll keep running until you hit an object (most likely a wall).

Ability: Blood Rage (Squire)

Hero Level 20

Type: toggle (default - press 3)

Effect: drastically increases damage and speed

Cost: 30 mana to activate, continuously drain mana per seconds used

Blood Rage is an incredibly good skill although along the same lines as Overcharge. Remember that Overcharge is wasteful but very useful when you need it. The same is said here. When you're fighting a boss or a tough group of enemies, Blood Rage is excellent. But you don't want to use it whenever you can, because the mana could be used for upgrading towers instead. If you have a pet, Blood Rage will affect that as well.

Ability: Call to Arms (Countess)

Hero Level 5

Type: toggle (default - press 3)

Effect: increases damage and resistance to user, also increases damage of allies within a radius

Cost: 30 mana to activate, continuously drain mana per seconds used

Call to Arms is sort of like a weaker Blood Rage but the damage extends to allies too. I don't particularly love it because most of the time I use it, no one else is nearby. But when you're fighting melee with a squire or barbarian, it can come in handy. It's a lower self-boost than Blood Rage, but when fighting a boss, every help you can get is welcome. Note that Call to Arms also affect nearby pets.

I personally think that both Squire abilities are better than their Countess counterparts. You can factor in that Countess walks faster although with less health, but at level 74 Squires will hit the hard cap for Hero Speed through gear and run decently fast. Even though I would pick Squire, many people love using Countess. If you can countrol Joust, you're basically a ninja. You don't need to use Joust when there's enemies but as a super boosted run speed, which could be useful in a tower build. For a hero build though, Blood Rage wins outright in Nightmare difficulty.

The Spike Blockade has the highest HP of any blockades. It also costs the most for its size, 3 DU. For a barrier, it is wider than Magic Blockade and has more HP than a 2 DU Physical Beam of the same length. It also does damage to enemies in a 2.25 range in front of the spikes at a 0.4s rate, both which cannot be improved by tower stats. Although it seems to have extremely high DPS, note that it can only damage enemies extremely close, so a Magic Missile Tower which damages enemies from far away most definitely will do more DPS by the time those enemies arrive at your Spike Blockade.

Overall, it's a great blockade when you need to really lock down a location or do extra damage. Most will prefer the Series EV's Physical Beam for its slightly cheap cost and the ability to be stretched out which saves mana when upgrading. A trick with the Spike Blockade is that if you face it backwards, as in the spikes away from the enemies, then it will be attacked less. Whether or not this is worth losing the damage that the spikes do is up to you.

Here comes my favorite Squire blockade, the Bouncer Blockade. It has a slow rate, but it can push enemies into pits/lava or push them away enough for bowling balls to roll down and bounce off them. Even though it has very useful offensive functions, it actually has very high HP too, about 1.5 times Magic Blockade's HP. The reach of the Bouncer Blockade cannot be improved by tower stats, but overall it is a solid defense against most enemies.

By now you've probably noticed that Squire towers scale much better damage-wise compared to Apprentice towers. This isn't an error, and the better scaling really shines with the Harpoon Turret. It does a lot of damage near endgame, has great range, and can hit more than one enemy per arrow. It does cost twice the amount of Magic Missile Tower, but considering everything I think it's well worth the DU. Because of its range, it's very useful in knocking down wyverns or placed after Apprentice towers.

Here comes the statistically best tower for Squires (and probably one of the best in the game). It should be used in only specific situations however. For example, it does best in hallways or downhill. Putting them near pits or lava would be a waste because the balls may fall into them before reaching their full damage potential. Nevertheless, when it is usable, it destroys enemies very fast and often better than Harpoon Turrets.

This is probably my least favorite blockade because of its high cost and low HP. It does do a lot of damage even though it doesn't scale well. Instead, I would rather spend one extra DU for a Harpoon Turret + Spike Blockade, or even better have Harpoon Turret + Physical Beam for the same DU. When enemies get close, they will be shredded most of the time, no questions asked. But having a Harpoon Turret behind a barrier means you can start attacking enemies while they are far away. Plus I see ogres and orcs smashing through the Slice N Dice before it reaches maximum spin, and I have to repair it simply too much.

It's down to playing style, but I think there are better options. One good use of the Slice N Dice is if you need to block an intersection, where attacking towers' cone-shaped range may not cover all directions enemies come from. In this case though, it's best to upgrade the Slice N Dice as much as possible due to it being attacked at all sides and having relatively modest HP.

Note: Attack Rate is different from Rate, which is given in seconds. For example, Rate: 0.3s means a tower will attack every 0.3 seconds, so lower Rate is better. For summoners however, this is split into Attack Rate and Attack Speed, where higher is better. Attack Rate: 4.0 actually means the lag between attacks is 1/4.0 = 25% or 75% faster than default, and Attack Speed: 2.0 means the animation of the attack is 1/2.5 = 40% or 60% faster than default. Also because the exact default lag and animation speed is unknown, there is currently no DPS stat for minions.

At the moment we do know that Jesters have the ability to move existing towers. Her towers are in the form of gifts - small, medium, and large. Gifts yield random rewards, and larger gifts can yield a random tower for less DU, loot, or mana. The Wheel of Fortune ability, which places a random buff on the allies or enemies, seem to not be too useful unless as a desperate last attempt.

I believe that character builds are so important that they deserve a separate section. For most of the experienced players, allocation skill points are easy and automatic, but I remembered how lost I was when I first played Dungeon Defenders. It's more than putting skill points mindlessly to a strict rule, however. Depending on your equipment, you may or may not want to stray from the norm. Before we get to that, here's a simple table of how much SP you gain per level.

Note: I believe that you should really pay close attention to builds when you can wear Mythical gear. Therefore, this section is mostly for level 74 and higher. if you start seeing number in the hundreds and your stats are in the tens, then don't worry about it until you can wear Mythical gear.

Skill Points per Level

Level

SP Gained

1

1

2-5

2

6-15

3

16-30

4

31-70

5

71-75

8

Cumulative SP of key milestones:

Level 70: 299

Level 74: 331

Level 90: 650

Most characters should be have either Hero Build or a Tower Build. A Hero Build focuses on Hero Damage and Hero Health, then on Hero Abilities. A Tower Build focuses on Tower Damage and Tower Health, then on Tower Attack Rate and Tower Range. Making a Hybrid Build is generally a bad idea, because specialization in tower or combat is important in Dungeon Defenders, and this will be more apparent in higher difficulties.

Builds Notation

SP: Skill points, how much you get when you level up that can be allocated into different stats.

Hero Build: A character with stat allocations primarily into hero health and hero damage, also hero abilites (often called DPS Build).

Tower Build: A character with stat allocations primarily into tower health and tower damage, also tower range and tower attack rate.

Hybrid Build: A character with careful stat allocations into a mixture of hero and tower stats. There are sometimes many types of hybrids.

Ability ( a / b ): This means with ability stats for First Ability / Second Ability.

Note that for towers, under Hero Info -> Defenses, you may not see Tower Health / Tower Attack / Tower Speed / Tower Attack Rate. But the order that they're listed in is what I meant. For example, for the first Defense stat, Squire has Defense Health, Monk has Aura Lifespan, and Huntress has Trap Charges. But they are all generally referred to as Tower Health, and respectively for the other Defense stats.

My recommendations may be revised based on your equipment. Let's say I told you to put 151 into Tower Health and 180 into Tower Damage. But your equipment gives you Tower (900/650/200/500). In this case, your cumulative stats would be Tower (1051/830/200/500). That's not bad, but because your equipment has so much Tower Health and you end up with so little Tower Range, you might want to put 151 into Tower Range instead and end up with (900/830/351/500). While Tower Health and Tower Damage are most important, you want your other Tower stats to be around 400 too. So keep balance of equipment in mind when taking my advice.

Note: You always want at least 300 Hero Health, 100 Hero Speed, and 400 Hero Casting Rate regardless of your build. For Hero Speed, 100 is the hard cap so getting more of it will do you absolutely no good.

So take this as a guide for how to allocate your points. If your equipment already gives you more than 900 Tower Health and I tell you to put SP into it, then you might want to rethink about putting it somewhere else that's lacking. An example of a Hero Build that uses Single Ability is Ranger with Piercing Spreadshot. An example of a Hero Build that uses Double Ability is Barbarian focusing on two of his stances. Also, the goals listed are for people who upgrade casually, such as 10-20 times each weapon or armor. For example, you can go very high with Mythical gear if you find and upgrade over 200 times each.

The Apprentice & Adept have 1 blockade and 4 attacking towers. Their weapon is a staff, which does decent damage but is inferior to bows and guns. They do have an attack ability, Mana Bomb (Purity Bomb for Adept) but it has a very long cooldown. Therefore, if you want to play a Hero Build, there are better options, not that it's impossible. So with that in mind, I consider the only viable build for Apprentice/Adept to be a Tower Build.

Because your Mana Blockade is too weak and is often used to fill up the last remaining DUs, you should go pure offense. But you shouldn't ignore Tower Health either, since although you expect other blockades to protect your towers, a second or two that you towers live may be the difference between success and failure.

The Squire & Countess have 3 blockades and 2 attacking towers. Their blockades attack as well, making him a balanced tower character. Squire's first ability Circular Slice is meant for crowd control, giving him room if he tries to get somewhere and repair or killing enemies. His second ability Blood Rage is very useful for defeating bosses and enemies in general, making a Hero Build very viable. Countess' Joust is good for piercing through enemies or getting somewhere else on the map very fast. Her Call to Arms gives her and her allies a hero boost.

One of the main reasons why a Hero Squire is used over Barbarian is because he can put down some emergency blockades and they can have good health even with bad tower stats. Plus, his Blood Rage gives him a huge increase in damage output against tough enemies, mainly bosses. Because Call to Arms isn't as good as Blood Rage, if you want to deal damage as a Squire or Countess, then choose Squire.

Out of all Squire towers, the Harpoon Turret is most used. His Spike Blockade could be substituted for the cheaper Physical Beam, but the damage and range of the Harpoon Turret is extremely useful. The Bouncer Blockade and Slice N Dice have their uses, and for them to be used they need to last long. Harpoon Turrets can reach their desired range through upgrading and Tower Buff Beam, but you can never go wrong with mor Attack Rate.